"We wish we were Obi-Wan Kenobi, and for the most part we are, but there's a little Darth Vader in all of us." -Chris Stevens

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I did something bad a long time ago (medium/high infraction on chastity), like 3 years ago. At the time I didn't think it was a big deal. However, once I realized that I should have gone to my bishop about it, I was applying for BYU and I was terrified that they wouldn't let me in, and that subsequently, my parents would not be able to pay for my schooling, and that they would be ashamed of me. Now as I am about to go to BYU, this weighs on me. If I were to confess to my bishop, now, on my last Sunday, would he not allow me to go to BYU, as I have denied this activity, and not repented of it for these many years? I was scared too long to say anything and missed many easier opportunities. But will I not be allowed to attend BYU if I do this?

-I'm Sorry

A:

Dear you,

Thanks for being brave to share. Because none of us are ecclesiastical leaders, we can't say for certain how your bishop will respond. But usually, it seems like bishops are willing to work with the individual. Their goal isn't usually to expel the student if they make a mistake but to help them along the repentance process. Especially if someone's showing remorse for what happened, as you definitely are. It sounds like you weren't aware that what you did was breaking the law of chastity, and your bishop would probably respond differently to that than if you did it both recently and aware of what you were doing.

This isn't quite the same situation, but when I was a freshman, I went on a date that didn't break the law of chastity but did break some other BYU dating rules. As several months passed, the guilt started gnawing at me and I decided to tell my bishop what had happened on the date. I thought for sure he was going to expel or at least suspend me, but he showed a ton of compassion. His main concern was helping me find peace with God again and supporting me with the emotional sorrow surrounding said date. Talking to him was overall a healing experience and relieved some of my inner turmoil.

None of us are, again, HCO officials or your bishop, but it doesn't sound like you'd have to worry about being expelled or anything like that. Especially since this is not a current thing you're struggling with and, as far as your wording suggests, it didn't happen multiple times. Talking to your bishop might give you some closure, though. It might help for you to pray over the next few days and fast about what to do. If this Sunday's too soon for you to prepare, you could even wait until your new BYU ward to talk with him. Hope you're able to come to terms with this--you're going to be okay. If only perfect people were allowed at BYU, the university would have closed down years ago.

What secondary school level subject has the most charged-up pressure groups of parents/others trying to tell textbook makers how to make the textbooks?

-betting on American history

A:

Dear Gambler,

I was unable to find any reputable statistics on this subject, but my guess would be different than yours: biology. That guess is based largely on the historical controversy surrounding evolution, because I can't think of any other subject that promoted a trial of national magnitude like the Scopes Monkey Trial.

That being said, if any of our readers are textbook makers, please leave a correction and enlighten us.

Sorry it's been so long; I had a pretty long and rambling draft going, but then I was watching Back to the Future last night and I had an epiphany (not unlike Doc Brown's vision of the flux capacitor*) and decided I could do it better/more succinctly.

So, speaking of Back to the Future: you know the dynamic between Doc and Marty? How Doc is this really smart scientist but he's kind of loopy and Marty is basically there because he needs help, but also because he thinks Doc is a smart guy? Suppose we start with that dynamic and we say, hey, let's make a TV show about Doc and Marty and all of the adventures they have. And, let's say that Doc made a ton of other inventions besides the time machine so that they can get in all sorts of crazy sci-fi adventures.

Now that we have a solid premise, let's decide that we're going to go with animation, because we want Doc and Marty to be able to do basically whatever we want them to and animation is waaaaaay cheaper for that than live-action. Plus, the original actors are way old now and it just wouldn't be quite the same to replace them with other actors. But, let's not just settle for crazy aliens and spaceships and whatever: let's take advantage of the strengths of the medium and do things that we could only do with animation. Let's have a storyline where the characters' actions create vastly diverging timelines and then show all of those timelines at the same time. We can do this side-by-side, like they did in (500) Days of Summer, except with 64 different permutations instead of just two. Or, we could put all of the 64 timelines on top of each other, the differences only noticeable by faint impressions laid on top of each other. And then we could have one character that could interact with all 64 different timelines at once.

Speaking of storylines, let's make them deep, like, deeper than what people would even expect from a silly cartoon. We'll do this in a variety of ways: for one, we'll reference classic sci-fi stories and hugely influential works of fiction by Spanish author Jorge Luis Borges. We'll study Joseph Campbell's theory of the monomyth and structure the stories we tell so that characters grow and progress as they face the unknown. And we'll have the show deal with deep emotional themes like depression and morality underneath all of the crazy sci-fi weirdness so that our episodes are emotionally resonant with audiences.

And then we'll muck up all of that hard work by covering everything in a deep layer of profanity and dirty jokes.

---

Believe it or not, the process I described is actually more or less how Rick and Morty was created, if not in that exact order. Basically, in 2006 creator Justin Roiland created a short animation called The Real Animated Adventures of Doc and Mharti. It was ostensibly a parody of Back to the Future, but with the characters' quirks hugely exaggerated until the characters became somewhat unrecognizable. And, like I mentioned, it was really crass and offensive. We don't know why Roiland made the thing; a lot of people just seem to assume he wanted to bug the people who owned the copyright to Back to the Future by sharing this incredible offensive animation that was associated with their content. But, Roiland also submitted the short to a film festival that was co-created by Dan Harmon (the creator of Community), who saw the short and helped Roiland turn it into a full-fledged series. And, if you've seen Community, you know that all of the deep stuff (the references, the emotions, the structure) is all just par for the course with Dan Harmon; the guy knows his stuff.

This might all sound like a glowing review of the series, but I've never seen a full episode. I've read a ton about it, and I've watched the occasional clip, but that's all I'll ever do; the show is just too crass and profane for me to watch regularly. Despite this, I remain convinced that, underneath all the filth, there's one heck of a show down there.

-Frère Rubik

*The physicist in me dies a little every time I hear about the flux capacitor because flux is a rate of change and you can't store that kind of thing in a capacitor. It's like trying to store your speed in a jar (as in, your velocity, not your illicit substance); you just can't do it. Physicist-me is also unable to ignore the multitudes of logical inconsistencies in Spongebob Squarepants, but I feel a lot less bad about that.

I thought it was a common trope, and then I thought maybe it was just one movie, but at this point I just can't find any evidence that I saw this anywhere, but I'm looking for a character or characters in books or film that regularly steals things and justifies it as "trading" because they leave something of significantly lesser value behind after each theft. The example I seem to recall is an exchange going something like "you stole that?!?!" "No, I traded a very fine knife for it."

I've put hours into the search on sleepless nights and I wonder if you can do better.

-Endlessly Frustrated

A:

Dear EF,

Logan from Gilmore Girls did something similar to this: he and his friends would steal trinkets from rich people, then swap them out for trinkets from other rich houses. It's not exactly the same as your description, but it seems like the writers below have heard of this other places as well.

This sounds a lot like the game Bigger or Better, where kids or teens go door-to-door and ask their neighbors to trade an item they're carrying for something bigger or better in their house (hence the name). Last time one group knocked on my family's door, we got an underripe pineapple in exchange for our checkers game. I want our checkers game back, Josh.

Wayne from The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson is EXACTLY like that. He does things like leave random drawings he made in lieu of nice clocks, or taking evidence from a police locker and leaving a knife in its place. No one has to agree to his trades in order to make them, he just sort of leaves whatever he has around in order to take things he finds interesting or useful at the time.

I initially thought Tasselhoff Burrfoot from the Dragonlance books might meet your parameters. Tasselhoff is a kender, a humanoid species that--among their other traits--tend to end up with things that aren't theirs. When I asked a friend familiar with Dragonlance, however, my friend clarified that the charismatic and charming Tasselhoff and other kender don't steal, they just sort of end up with things in their possession via chance and a sort of unconscious pocketing. Since they don't steal consciously, they also don't switch any object for the one they've removed.

This definitely isn't the character you're looking for, but all the discussion of beings who steal things but don't really consider it stealing reminded me of Hashkat from Lloyd Alexander's The Iron Ring. Hashkat is a monkey king and lives by the creed that if something isn't nailed down then taking it isn't stealing, and if it can be pried loose, then it isn't nailed down.

Anyways, not helpful to your quest, but at least your mental store of fictional and amicable thieves has now been expanded.

Board Question #90073 piqued my interest, so let's talk Spider-Man. I'd love to hear more of your thoughts on Spider-Man: Homecoming because in my opinion, it's one of the best Marvel films yet. Now's the time for that rant! Also, are you excited for Infinity War?

-MJ

A:

Dear Anna Watson's Favorite Niece,

Oooooooooh boy.

Unfortunately, life made me leave this question sitting in the inbox for two and a half weeks [UPDATE: IT'S BEEN NEARLY A MONTH BECAUSE I'M A TERRIBLE PERSON], so my thoughts are not nearly as fresh as they could have been. But, I still have opinions, so I'll do my best to re-capture what I was thinking/feeling that weekend.

[GUYS IT'S NOT REALLY GOING TO BE POSSIBLE TO DISCUSS THIS STUFF WITHOUT SPOILERS SO IF YOU STILL HAVEN'T SEEN IT YOU SHOULD PROBABLY JUST SAVE THIS ANSWER FOR LATER, 'CAUSE THERE'S ABOUT TO BE A TON OF SPOILERS IN THIS HOUSE.]

Firstly, in case I haven't made this clear on the Board before, I'm a huge Spider-Man fan. One of my earliest memories is being really frustrated by trying to win a Spider-Man plushie in one of those grabby-claw games and failing every time. When I was eight my grandma bought me this giant book of Spider-Man history and I subsequently read the entire thing (it's not a small book). In 2004 I got a DVD copy of Spider-Man 2 for Christmas and I used a random number from the case as the parental control code for movies on my PS2 (because I was sure I would never forget the number because SPIDER-MAN). In 2007 I saw Spider-Man 3 on opening night and was so excited that 1) I didn't realize it's kind of a terrible movie and 2) I annoyed the heck out of all of the friends I went to see it with. Though I didn't regret my mission at all, I was more than a little bummed that I'd be entering the MTC before The Amazing Spider-Man was released in theaters. Eighteen months later, I saw promotional materials for The Amazing Spider-Man 2 pop up in a McDonald's in my area, and I was super excited to see that they'd ditched the lame, basketball-looking costume from the trailers for the first one.

I say all of this just to illustrate why I was going to be seeing Spider-Man: Homecoming no matter what the pre-release reviews said. Now, after seeing him in Civil War, I was pretty sure that Tom Holland was going to be a spectacular (heh) Spider-Man, but even if the critics had said that the movie was a floating barge of garbage, it was going to be a floating barge of Spider-Man garbage, and nothing was going to stop me from watching it, gosh darn it.

(Speaking of The Spectacular Spider-Man, that is the best Spider-Man TV show in existence and you should be watching it right now.)

It was incredibly relieving, then, when Tom Holland proved himself to be THE ONE TRUE SPIDER-MAN and Homecoming proved itself to be one of the best Spider-Man movies of all time, if not the best (I'm reserving judgement until I watch Spider-Man 2 again. Then maybe I'll have to watch Homecoming again. And then Spider-Man 2 once more. Maybe I'll just only watch those two movies for the rest of my life. Who knows?).

What was so great about this movie, and this Spider-Man? Well,

-HE'S IN HIGH SCHOOL. While there have been plenty of great Spider-Man stories featuring an adult Peter Parker, there's just something special about seeing him juggling school and girls and punching people in the face (for reference, see the original Ultimate Spider-Man comics and The Spectacular Spider-Man which you're supposed to be watching right now since I told you to earlier).

-HE'S NOT A HUNK. Listen. I like Andrew Garfield. I look on the ASM movies a lot more kindly than most folks. I appreciated that he cried the first time he put on the Spider-Man suit, because it showed that he was taking this seriously. BUT THE MAN IS JUST TOO DARN HUNKY. This is probably made worse by other character traits from the movies. I mean, he skateboards! He's into retro photography! He wears cool hoodies! As one video I watched put it, the Tobey Maguire Peter Parker would have killed to be the Andrew Garfield Peter Parker in high school, and that's not really how it's supposed to work. Even with powers, Peter's an underdog, so he needs to still stick out a little bit.

-Uncle Ben is already dead. Now, I actually wouldn't have minded seeing another origin story. They could have done the spider bite and the whole shebang and I wouldn't have complained. But, what I liked about this is that the primary lesson that comes from Uncle Ben's death—the whole "With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility" thing—has already been learned and internalized by Peter by the time this movie rolls around. I mean, sure, he's not perfect at it; he seriously contemplates using Spider-Man to make himself look more popular, and he does seem to take a small break from Spider-Man-ing after the fiasco with the ferry. But, by and large, there isn't a question in Peter's mind as to whether or not he's going to be responsible and use his powers for good. The best example of this? When he finds out that Liz's dad is actually the Vulture—which, by the way, IS SUCH A SPIDER-MAN THING FOR THIS MOVIE TO DO—the audience thinks that he's trying to decide whether or not to leave Liz at the dance, but really, he made the decision as soon as he left the car by hiding his phone there. While the power/responsibility lesson is crucial to Peter's motivations, it's only one of many lessons he learns over the course of his superhero career, so the fact that we've moved past it is really exciting from a storytelling point of view.

-To clarify: in the comics, Adrian Toomes (the Vulture) and Liz Allan aren't related at all. But, as a fan of the comics, I'm not even mad, because that triangular relationship between Peter, his love interest, and the villain is SOOOOO RIGHT. And, in the end, he has to sacrifice his relationship with Liz to do the right thing in stopping the Vulture! It's so terrible, but SO GOOD. Maybe Spider-Man fans are all just masochists for loving this constant turmoil, but boy, that tension just felt...right.

-MJ. First, an aside: I avoided spoilers for this movie like the plague, but still managed to get spoilt a little bit...or so I thought. See, I read an article that claimed that Zendaya's character was named Michelle Toomes, which would have made her the Vulture's daughter. At the time, I thought that was a pretty decent idea: have one of Peter's best friends be the Vulture's kid so that it's not as easy for him to go after the villain (the best analogue in the comics I can think of for this one is Betty Brant and the Molten Man, but they're siblings). But, that article was actually WRONG and it was wrong in the best possible way, because it made me so sure of the twist I thought was coming that when the real twist came along, it absolutely floored me.

But anyway, back to MJ: I know that Gwen Stacy was Peter's first main love interest, and I know that her death was tragic and made a lasting impact on superhero comics as a whole, and Emma Stone was really good in the ASM movies...but I like Mary Jane better. I like Mary Jane because, in my eyes, she's a much deeper and richer character. She's a girl who's obsessed with maintaining a carefree, party girl attitude to hide the fact that she's incredibly sad and hurt on the inside. Over time, though, Gwen's death and Peter's example help ground her and help her actually deal with the trauma in her life rather than suppressing it. Besides that, I feel like she understands Peter in a much more profound way than Gwen did. Gwen never knew that Peter was Spider-Man until the day she died, but MJ knew before Peter even told her, and that makes her so much more supportive of Peter. She understands the immense pressure he feels to help people as Spider-Man, and she wants him to do that, even when it means a personal sacrifice on her part. My favorite example of this comes in a series called Spider-Man: Reign. Reign was panned by a lot of critics because it just feels like a rip-off of The Dark Knight Returns, and, to be fair, it pretty much is, but I still like it. In Reign, Peter is old and living alone; Mary Jane is dead. We find out over the course of the series that Mary Jane died of radiation poisoning, which she contracted as a result of being so close to Peter (who, if you'll remember, has radioactive blood). Peter is at her bedside when she's dying, only to hear the sound of police sirens from outside. Torn between staying with MJ or going to help, he ultimately leaves her to stop whatever crime is being committed, only to find that she passed away while he was out. The memory of this haunts him and ultimately causes him to give up being Spider-Man. But, later in the series, it's revealed that she wanted him to go; her last words were "Go get 'em, Tiger." It just really drives home the point that MJ knows Peter so well and cares about him so much that she doesn't want to make him agonize over choosing her or his responsibility, which strikes me as a very deep love.

Now, before we get too hasty here, MJ in Homecoming played a very small role; there wasn't even much indication that she has feelings for Peter. But, I love the character, and I'm really excited to see where things go from here.

Those are the main points. Here are a few smaller ones:

-The fully-orchestrated Spider-Man theme song at the beginning is so wonderful.

-That scene where Peter is trapped under the rubble and water's pouring down on him? It's a callback to a really iconic Spider-Man story, and I thought it was super cool that they included it.

-Donald Glover! And he's the Prowler! And they mentioned Miles Morales! Ah!

-WE COULD ACTUALLY GET A DECENT SINISTER SIX MOVIE.

-I like that Aunt May found out his secret identity. It just seemed to fit for this version of the character.

Anyway. It's been nearly a month, and I don't remember as much as I did, but that was one heck of a Spider-Man movie.

-Frère Rubik

P.S. Spider-Man and Doctor Strange fighting together?

Thor meeting the Guardians of the Galaxy?

Thanos remotely crushing an entire moon/planetoid and hurling it at the Avengers?

Hi, there. I'm a woman. I consider myself a feminist and at least a little left-leaning. But I wasn't nearly as offended by the leaked Google "anti-diversity" memo as the media is saying I ought to be.

I don't think the author was entirely in the right. I disagreed with some of the gender disparities that he says are non-biased—see, for example, Carol Rose's article "Bargaining and Gender" for a powerful and tragic illustration of how women are severely disadvantaged by the belief that they are more cooperative than men, whether it's true or not. (The article is available through the BYU library if you're a student.) I also don't see him citing any sources, which of course is a huge red flag.

But on the whole I don't think it's unreasonable to point out that there may be legitimate, non-socially-constructed differences between men and women and that the left is almost uniformly in denial of those differences. He made good points about the flaws in the current Google diversity model, the intellectual insularity of much liberal discourse, and the importance of demoralizing diversity. And I think it's a mistake to label the memo "anti-diversity"—he was very careful to clarify that he doesn't think diversity is bad, just that he thinks there needs to be more room for open and honest discussion about the drawbacks of the way Google promotes it.

Wanna give the memo a read and tell me what you think? I should clarify that, like the author, I don't think efforts toward diversity are bad or that women and minorities don't face real discrimination. I'm just not sold on the idea that we should all buy into diversity hiring practices without question or risk being shamed into silence. I'm interested in a variety of responses and I'm willing to wait for an answer if you need more than 100 hours.

-who's irrational?

A:

Dear who,

Here are some thoughts from a straight, white male in the technology industry who would generally be considered to be quite liberal.

The author did provide many citations in his original document. Gizmodo did not include them in the version they published. Whether that was intentional by Gizmodo to discredit the author or not, I don't know, but it's poor journalism. I'm not going to evaluate whether the citations are credible, but they were present, which is a huge item in the author's favor in terms of trying to have an honest discussion. The full document with graphics and citations has since been posted, but it took me a while to find it compared to the altered version.

Also, the thing that has frustrated me the most about almost all of the media coverage I've heard has been the insistence that the document stated that women were biologically unsuited for technology jobs. Which is not what the author said or implied at all. In no way did he say "women can't do tech." He said (paraphrasing), "men and women have biological differences and it's possible those biological differences can explain some amount of why fewer women go in to tech than men and here are ways we can address that to improve diversity without ignoring biology." Which is a completely different message, especially coming from a person holding a graduate degree in Biology who cites several sources.

Unfortunately, his points are ignored for the very reasons he chose to write the document in the first place. I've also seen in my place of work a similar culture that it is discouraged for straight, white males to provide criticism about diversity practices even if they are trying to improve those practices.

I've sat in a hiring meeting where a group of ~20 software developers provided feedback about who among a group of 10 candidates should be hired. The candidates were made up of men and women across many ethnic backgrounds. Some men and women were universally approved as good hires. Some were universally rejected as poor hires. Some were in between. After the discussion and rankings the manager running the meeting told us we needed to reevaluate some specific candidates who had been universally rejected "because they would make good diversity hires." A manager straight up told us to reevaluate candidates because of their ethnicity and gender after having agreed that their qualifications were insufficient. Eventually someone said that if we reevaluated them then we needed to reevaluate the white males we'd also rejected or we weren't being fair and the manager dropped the matter. That meeting left me feeling uncomfortable.

My place of work has run a program with the local school system designed to encourage girls to learn about computer programming—sounds good. The program was literally titled "Girls who Code" (and then changed to "Coding Divas", which I really don't understand being a positive word choice) with the explicit mandate to actively recruit girls to participate. When pushed on the matter they insist that boys are welcome to participate too, but how many teen and pre-teen boys are going to see a group called "Girls Who Code" or "Coding Divas" as a welcoming place, especially when they have to explicitly ask to participate while the girls are being actively courted? There is no corresponding "Boys who Code" or "Coding Cowboys" program.

I fully understand the goals of the people saying and doing these things. I want to live in a world were individuals can self-select how they spend their time and which occupations they pursue rather than being buffeted by the whims of social biases. I want my two daughters to have a fair shot at pursuing whatever professions and hobbies they choose. Yet, I'm extremely uncomfortable with the idea of intentionally selecting and promoting individuals in an attempt to counter the biases faced by their demographic rather than on their individual qualifications and interests. And I fully recognize that part of the problem is that biases can be subconscious and not even tied to malicious intent.

So how do we counter both conscious and subconscious biases without artificially discriminating against other groups? I love how this was handled in orchestra and symphony auditions. Candidates audition behind a screen so the evaluators do not know the gender, ethnicity, height, eye color, hair color, etc. of the candidate. The only information with which they can evaluate the candidate is the performance. Upon adopting this methodology the number of women hired increased significantly. They did not give preferential treatment to women in order to fix their bias problem—they changed the hiring methodology to make bias more difficult if not impossible.

I wish we could find similar approaches everywhere that biases are preventing individuals from obtaining jobs for which they are perfectly well qualified. I know that's unlikely to happen though. I also recognize that point-of-hire changes don't solve underlying problems that affect availability of the candidates in the first place. It does not result in the desired overall outcome to audition candidates behind screens if every music school in the country were to deny female applicants.

I don't have solutions to the inherent inequity resulting from societal biases. It's a hard issue to approach made even more difficult by the existing attempts to improve the situation having become seemingly sacred, inviolate, and beyond criticism. I want a world that functions as an egalitarian meritocracy and I am uncomfortable with the idea of attempting to right one injustice by creating another. I also find it incredibly unfortunate that after having written this I now must consider whether posting it will put me in danger of being doxxed, harassed, and possibly losing my job.

I agree wholeheartedly with CPM's answer. As was already mentioned, the media (and many of the people discussing the issue based solely on what the media has said) are grossly misrepresenting both the content and the spirit of the memo.

The only thing I have to add is that the fact that he was fired proves his point that Google is an ideological echo chamber where any dissenting opinions are shamed (or fired) into silence. If what he said was actually hateful or mean spirited, firing him would make sense. But he didn't say "Women aren't as good as men, so we should stop trying to hire women." He said (paraphrased), "There should be more women working here, but instead of hiring women just because they're women (which, by the way, is kinda illegal), let's look at why women aren't working here and try to make our environment more welcoming to them: here are a few ways we could accomplish that. Also, let's treat people as individuals and not as part of a group." I think he presented his argument in a very reasonable way that welcomed further discussion. If the things he said and the sources he provided were wrong, there was a great opportunity to teach him why he was wrong. That opportunity to teach not only him, but every one of his colleagues that agreed with what he wrote, is gone forever, because Google made him into a martyr for them.

I've got eczema on my hands that's occasionally pretty rough. I think that making sure my hands stay moisturized is probably helpful for me (I'm pretty flaky/dry/flare-y right now), especially since I tend to overwash my hands (which is drying.) Sometimes I run hot water over my hands to deal with itching but I don't think that's actually a good idea so don't follow me on that.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of other tips for you, but I'll say that sometimes when it's bad this is something I pray for healing with. I know it's a "little thing" but if I care enough to pray about it, then Heavenly Father cares enough to listen. He can also help you find peace amid the craziness of college life and help you prioritize to reduce stress.

If you're interested in learning techniques to help manage your stress, try this! I'm a fan of breath counting.

My Question Here. My mom is a member of the church and my father is not. Can my mother still attend the temple with me if my father is against it? What I'm worried about is if my mother can take out her endowments without my fathers consent?

Melissa K.

A:

Dear Melissa,

No, she can't. Before any person that is married to an unendowed spouse (member or not) can be endowed, the bishop has to receive written consent from their spouse.

Have you ever actually seen a TV channel go off for the night by playing the Star Spangled Banner while showing an American flag followed by the screen just going to vertical color bars? I've heard that's what used to happen before pretty much all stations were on 24 hours a day.

-Lon

A:

Dear Lon,

Well, there was that one time in Toy Story 2. Other than that, no, it was too long ago.

I think I can remember seeing off-air test patterns, but I'm having a hard time finding definitive information about when stations made the switch to 24-hour programming. Given the fickleness of memory I can't be 100% sure it's a real memory.

I listened to the episode with Steven Ray Morris of the Fear Based Life podcast. Steven talked about how he grew up in Orange County and that the OC houses the largest population of Mormons outside of Utah. Is this true now? Was it true in the '90s?

-Wendigo

A:

Dear Wendigo,

As far as I can tell, no. It's not true now, and it wasn't true in the 90s. For example, Clark County, NV has more Latter-day Saints than Orange County, CA. According to this site, Orange County didn't even have the most Mormons in California in 1990. That distinction belonged to Los Angeles County.

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